MORE motorcyclists have died on North Yorkshire’s roads in the last eight months than in all of 2017, police have confirmed.

North Yorkshire Police said that eight riders had died on the county’s 6,000 miles of roads between January 1 and September 4 this year - up from five in 2017 - with the good weather a possible factor in the increase.

The latest death happened last weekend, when a 57-year-old man from the Wetherby area who was riding a red Honda VFR along the B6255 from Hawes towards Ribblehead Viaduct collided with a campervan and died at the scene.

His death means the same number of riders have been killed on North Yorkshire’s roads in the last eight months as in 2016, when eight riders were killed in 12 months.

This year’s increase was probably due to a number of factors, police said, including the long spell of hot, dry weather, which saw many more people take to the roads on their motorbikes.

Inspector Dave Barf, biker and roads policing officer, said the countryside and rural roads attracted bikers from around the region and neighbouring areas, and the force was targeting motorcyclists with campaigns “to try and cut the number of casualties on our roads”.

He said: “Every collision is different and has a unique combination of factors. We see fluctuations in figures year on year, but we do tend to see an increase in the number of motorbikes on our roads during warm weather.

“We use education alongside enforcement, which includes marked and unmarked patrols, the strategic deployment of our safety cameras on high-risk routes and appeals and investigation work to identify riders we believe have committed motoring offences. We’re continuing this mix of enforcement and education this summer to try to limit the number of casualties on our roads.

Last year saw the lowest number of riders killed on the roads in recent years, with the highest in the last five years being 12 in 2014.

Insp Barf recently shared his experiences of attending fatal crashes in a blog, and reiterated the need for riders to take care on the roads, stating “if you saw what we saw, you’d be a safer rider”.

This week, he said: “One of the most upsetting things we see is the way fatal crashes devastate families. We’ve had to visit the families of eight motorcyclists so far in 2018 – that’s one a month – to tell them their lives will never be the same again."

“If we could only give one piece of advice to motorcyclists, it would be this - no rider who’s died in a crash has ever left their house thinking it would happen. But it does happen – it’s happened to eight people this year alone. If you saw what we saw, you’d slow down. You’d leave yourself room to think.”